“I wish it could have been water. Oil makes men idle, whereas water makes them work.” 
- King Idris of Libya, commenting on Libya’s 1950s discovery of oil

Heli-bags are dropped every 120m. We unload the bags and plant six geophone stations between them — two cables, twelve geophones per bag. With a crew of ten, that works out to about a 15-pound maximum per person. After four or five bags, the commentary begins: haraara (hot), shimss (sun), taweel (too long), baeed (too far), and, my personal favorite, taban (tired).

I like to respond with, “Tabana?”

In Arabic, both nouns and adjectives have masculine and feminine forms. For example, rajool kabeer (big man) is masculine, while immara’a kabeera (big woman) is feminine.

Thus, when ten adult men walk 600m carrying 15 pounds for less than 120m at a time, and they then start telling me they’re taban, I think asking “Tabana?” is an appropriate response.

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